| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Inversion Theory

Page history last edited by John F. Felix 14 years, 10 months ago

Inversion Theory and the Missing City of God

 

The “inversion theory” of Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld y de la Torre, M.A. Ed., summarized here works appears to have much merit, but it still needs to be fine-tuned in some areas. The one point that doesn’t seem to fully resonate is that in Mesopotamian Edenic myth:

 

cities + garden = creation myth

whereas in Genesis 2, it is only:

garden = creation myth

and God walks about (as the “wind”) in the garden, but does not supposedly dwell on earth. The author maintains that in order to invert the neighboring pagan myths, the biblical writers deliberately removed the city, but I contend that at least God’s dwelling place on earth is implied, because these myths were known to the readers. The true inversion, for me, is not that the gods (or God) do not live in a city with a pleasure park annex, but that the heavenly throne on earth, God’s abode, is in Eden (not the garden, which is separate). So, the argument goes: not every statement is a direct inversion, nor need they be; there is also simple recasting of motifs, in this case the motif of the universally understood ANE motif of the city, whether of gods or mortal kings, augmented by a well-tended garden. The inversion of gods is one God; the inversion of city is no discernable city; the inversion of garden is – garden? Since not every concept is rigidly inverted, then another word to describe their efforts is polemic, rather than straight inversion.

The Bible book of Genesis recasts the garden of Eden, not as the paradiso of a city, but as the garden attached to the earthly location of God’s actual presence on earth. Why is the abode of Elohim merely implied, and not stated? Ezekiel speaks in Edenic terms of the mountain of God and fiery stones, not found in Genesis, directly referencing the garden in terms familiar to anyone who has heard Mesopotamian motifs as the “garden of Yahweh,” like the pagan concept of the garden of the gods. The identification of the garden as the garden of God’s abode is strengthened as the author, David Steinberg, of “Why Were There Two Trees in the Garden of Eden” under “Garden of God,” points out:

The name “Eden” is one of the very few words in Biblical Hebrew derived, via Akkadian, from the first known written language Sumerian.[6] Almost certainly, this name was chosen because of the similarity in Hebrew of ceden= “Eden” to Hebrew céden= “pleasure”.

The earthly king’s park of pleasure had a definite character, one aspect of which was that it was an annex to the king’s living spaces, so that he might stroll about in “the cool of the day” like the Hebrew God. If there is indeed an unmentioned dwelling of God, of which Eden is the annex, the question of why this is not mentioned in Genesis may never be answered. However, de la Torre supports the idea that such an abode was understood, based on the language used to describe Eden:

A tradition preserved in Ezekiel 28:13-16 equates the "mountain of God" with Eden, the "garden of God," thereby linking the cosmic imagery used for the cosmic mountains of El and Baal at Ugarit. The description of Eden in Genesis 2:6-15 makes use of ancient near eastern cosmic mountain motifs. The presence of the "ground flow" (do; ‘ed) that "watered the entire face of the earth" and the four headstreams that derived from the ground flow and "the river" flowing out of Eden have all been considered by scholars as parallel to the paradise language of the watery dwelling place of El.5 Ezekiel 47:1-12, Zechariah 14:8, and Joel 3:18 (Hebrew, 4:18) all describe the "fertilizing waters" flowing from the temple of God in Jerusalem, Mount Zion, the divine mountain. All of these references to Mount Zion are rooted in the tradition of a sacred mountain in the north, Tsaphan of Syria. Additionally, just as the cosmic paradise of Eden is linked to Zion by the prophets, Mount Sinai, the "mountain of God" (e.g., Exo. 3:1; 4:27), served as the cosmic center prior to the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple.

I believe that the argument that the geography of Eden is pre-flood, and post-flood descriptions are useless in getting a fix on its location does not stand up to scrutiny.

1. Although it is logical that “post-flood” geography might be different from “pre-flood” geography, this is merely an inference based on logic, because we cannot know for sure what remained unchanged and what retained geographic continuity with what went before.

2. If Moses or whoever wrote Genesis took the time to locate Eden as the source of stream that irrigates the garden in Eden before dividing into four rivers, then this geographic marking must have made sense to the readers existing at the time of composition.

3. Two of the rivers are allegedly known today, the Tigris and Euphrates, and two are not. It is likely, however, that the mysterious Pishon and Gihon locations were known at the time Genesis was written, or else why mention them.

4. The conversion of the pagan motif of a pagan god as the source of two rivers flowing from its represented form is noted. The Hebrews have not inverted this concept, but simply changed two into four natural divisions, with the rivers beginning as a stream or “rivulet” merely flowing out of the plain, presumedly like any natural spring source, to eventually split into the four rivers mentioned in Genesis.

A better theory would acknowledge the fact that there is both inversion and conversion, often within the same basic textual unit, with additional other motivating factors to be dealt with in future writings.

One objection to the theory that the locations of the rivers were known might be that the readers would be familiar with the former rivers as part of the mythical landscape by name, but not by actual location, so that they would expect an accurate account to list them, although no one, including the author of Genesis, would have any real knowledge about them.

Even conservative evangelical scholars admit:

Creation was a conquering of chaos. Most creation accounts from the ancient world began with a primeval chaos. The God who could conquer chaos was understood as the true and living God. Genesis 1 is a magnificent account of how the God of Israel brought the chaos of Genesis 1:2 into an ordered cosmos.

Elwell, Walter A.; Beitzel, Barry J., ed.s, Baker encyclopedia of the Bible, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1988, Vol.1, p. 540.

Copyright © 2008 by John F. Felix. All rights reserved.

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.